Clegg questioned by MPs on constitutional reform: Politics live blog

8.45am: Nick Clegg is giving evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee this morning. He will be talking about his plans to allow for the recall of MPs, as well as Lords reform and constitutional reform generally, but hopefully he will be asked about Lord Adonis's splendid idea to move the Lords to somewhere like Manchester. Adonis, the former Labour transport secretary, has set out the idea in a letter to the Spectator.

As Neil O'Brien rightly says, London is New York, Washington and LA rolled into one, which is unhealthy for our national politics. So I have a serious suggestion. If the House of Lords is going to be reformed next year, part of the reform should be to move it out of London to a city in the Midlands or the north, perhaps next to the relocated BBC in MediaCity in Salford Quays.

Half of our national politicians would then assemble well away from 'Planet London'. The public purse would make a net saving by selling the vast and expensive property portfolio the Lords has been acquiring to house its 850 members along Millbank and the surrounding streets. And yes, yours truly — a Londoner and proud of it — would be happy to lead the way, if by then I am still a member.

Adonis expanded on his proposal on the Today programme earlier this morning. He said London was not close to the heart of the country. I've taken the quote from PoliticsHome.

London is not central to the United Kingdom. Birmingham or Manchester or indeed any of the other great cities of the Midlands or the nort would be much closer to those who elect the second chamber than London and in the modern age. There's absolutely no need for both houses of Parliament to be in the same place.

Let's see what Clegg has to say about that. I'll be covering the hearing in detail.

Otherwise, the Abu Qatada controversy rumbles on. Kenneth Clarke was on the Today programme too, sounding not 100% supportive of Theresa May. I'll post more quotes from that soon. Here's the agenda for the day.

9.30am: Crime figures are published.10am: Tom Watson holds a press conference to mark the publication of his book on phone hacking.

10am: Nick Clegg gives evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee about the recall of MPs and constitutional reform generally.

Around 12.30pm: MPs resume their debate on the finance bill. They will be voting on the "granny tax" proposal. Pensioners will be holding a rally at Westminster to protest about it.

As usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a summary at around 1pm and another in the afternoon.

And if you're a hardcore fan, you can follow @gdnpoliticslive. It's an automated feed that tweets the start of every new post that I put on the blog.

Photograph: David Jones/PA

9.14am: As I said earlier, Kenneth Clarke (pictured), the justice secretary, did not sound 100% supportive of Theresa May when he was asked about the Abu Qatada affair on the Today programme earlier. This is what he said when he was asked about the prospect of Theresa May being able to go ahead with her plan to deport Qatada in the light of his latest appeal.

I'm not party and I'm still not party to the Home Office legal advice. If I was the home secretary, I would probably be confident it was right. I know what the home secretary has said. It seems to me quite sound and she could well be proved right.

I'm not quite sure what the big deal is either, because she did say that this whole thing was going to take some months in any event before this whole thing could be resolved. The key thing is when do we get the decision which we want, which is that he should be deported to Jordan to stand trial in a case where torture has not been used to get the evidence.

In his interview, Clarke was also quite robust on why it would not be a good idea to allow parliament to over-rule the European court of human rights.

The fact is that we have the separation of powers, the courts and parliament and the executive face each other, in the end we're all subject to the rule of law. So, we certainly can't have the parliament able to cast a vote to reverse a judgment in a court of law. You'd be taking us back to the days of the Tudor monarchs if you start doing that.

The only country in Europe like this is Belarus, he said, which has not signed up to the European convention on human rights.

The only country that doesn't go though this process is Belarus. It doesn't belong to the convention. The government never loses cases there. Their president signs a piece of paper. They've got some very good gulags. They'd probably prefer to be deported from Belarus, because the way they're treated in Belarus is very bad.

Conservative Home insists that it speaks for mainstream Conservatives, a claim that I used to be sympathetic to, but which is surely now only believed by BBC television and radio producers, and which needs to be exploded. The lives of most Tory supporters are too interesting, enjoyable and civically engaged for them to read it. The website, as its recent interventions demonstrate, represents a narrow, Right-wing faction. It is given to issuing "alternative manifestos". It has just concluded a disloyal survey of 1,500 Tory party members in an attempt to find out which Conservative politician is favoured to succeed Mr Cameron. It wages a poorly judged campaign against the Tory chairman, Sayeeda Warsi. It was a supporter of the Downing Street director of communications, Andy Coulson, who has since been arrested.

Recently, in an act of spectacular immaturity, the website called for the Health and Social Care Bill to be ditched at the last minute. It is certainly significant that this influential website is controlled by Lord Ashcroft, who has been left out in the cold since the election and is perhaps resentful that no ministerial role has been found for him.

It has become fashionable to regard David Cameron as a dilettante Prime Minister. This does not ring true to me. He is a highly intelligent man who became leader of his party and Prime Minister at a young age, arguably too young, but that is not his fault. Even a workaholic like Gordon Brown would not be able to keep up with the details of all the hyper-activity while keeping another party on board at the same time. It is not that Cameron himself does too little, but that his government tries to do too much. The decision to go for hyper-activity was made early. Indeed, it was not so much a decision, but an assumption that the chance had come for the radicals in the upper reaches of the Conservative party to make their moves, even though they had not secured an overall majority.

I went on to Eton College's website. The college does, of course, provide scholarships for the sons of the not very wealthy. But they aren't the main reason that Eton wants charitable donations. As the site makes clear: "Nearly 90 per cent of Eton's budget comes from fees. The balance has shifted towards too great a reliance on fee income which is simply not sufficient to protect Eton's overall excellence and independence."

The nature of the threat is not spelt out, but the advantages to the top-rate taxpayer certainly are. If A. Richard Bloke gives £100k to the college, the higher-rate relief for him will be £37.5k and the tax reclaimed by Eton will be £25k. So the value to Eton totals £125k for a net outlay by A. Rich Bloke of £62.5k. And who, you might ask, provides the rest?

In essence what has happened is that A Rich Bloke has substituted his judgment on what to do with part of his taxable income — and part of yours — for that of the Government. He may well argue (and that is exactly the implication of the charities' case) that charitable spending is better targeted and better used by non-government agencies. But he still expects the police to arrive if he's robbed.

In a move without precedent against an ex-minister, Abdel Hakim Belhadj served legal papers against the former foreign secretary over claims that he authorised the Secret Intelligence Service to hand him over to Gaddafi's government.

The Mail has learned that Mr Belhadj's lawyers are now preparing a case against Mr Blair as well.

10.00am: Nick Clegg is about to give evidence to the Commons political and constitutional reform committee.

He is appearing with Mark Harper, the Conservative constitutional reform minister.

Clegg says recall was never meant to be an unqualified power. It was always supposed to be used only in certain circumstances.

Q: But what if people use the recall power to target an MP because they disagree with him or her on an issue like abortion?

Clegg says the bill would not allow this.

Q: But what is there in the bill to stop this?

Clegg says recall would only be allowed if the Commons had decided that serious wrongdoing had occured.

Q: So you are confident these procedures could not be abused?

Yes, says Clegg. He says people are criticising the bill on the grounds that the recall power would be too narrow, not too broad.

Q: And what about an MP who does not do much work in his constituency?

Clegg says the Commons would have "a fair amount of discretion" in deciding what constituted serious wrongdoing. But he does not think "industrial-scale laziness" would count as serious wrongdoing.

10.14am:Graham Allen, the chairman, says he has a sense from colleagues that this proposal involves "fighting yesterday's battle". He means that Clegg's proposal addresses a problem highlighted by the expenses scandal. He says the committee has not taken a formal view yet, but he tells Clegg that he wants to flag this view up anyway.

10.16am: Clegg says he thinks there is still a need for a "backstop sanction". He sees recall as a "backstop sanction" rather than as a tool to be used "aggressively".

10.17am:Eleanor Lang, a Conservative, says before the election an MP was "hounded out" over allegations that turned out to be unfounded. She does not say who she is talking about.

Mark Harper says that, under his plans, there would be "due process". Recall would only happen if an MP were disciplined by the House of Commons.

Q: Would changing parties be enough to trigger recall? And if not, why not?

Clegg says he would not view that as serious wrongdoing. But the Commons could decide otherwise.

Labour's Sheila Gilmore goes next. She says the draft recall bill seems to be an "unloved propsal", because both sides dislike. (She means that some people think it goes too far, while others feel it does not go far enough.)

Clegg says he does not want "an entire festival of populist, tit-for-tat politics". He is trying to achieve "a balanced approach".

Harper says this proposal is only intended to deal with cases involving an MP doing something "so serious" that voters should not have to wait until the end of the parliament before being allowed to pass judgment.

Clegg says things have changed since the election. But the resolve of the government to press on has not weakened, he says.

The draft bill on Lords reform has been published, he says. The Localism Act has been passed. Talks on party funding reform have started. There has been "real progress" on the Scotland bill, he says. It will involve the biggest transfer of fiscal power from London to Scotland ever. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act has been published. Plans for individual voter registration have been published. The Silk commission on devolution in Wales has been set up.Q: The committee's next inquiry will be on the need for a constitutional convention in the UK. The committee will meet people from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But who does it meet to discuss England?

Clegg says he agrees with the need to decentralise power within England. Sometimes reform can happen in a piecemeal way. The government's city deals will give eight cities unprecedented powers. Yesterday he had a meeting with colleagues who said, if cities can get these powers, why not Cornwall. That shows how these initiatives develop.

The government has move "relatively fast" to give powers to cities, he says. But these powers have not been properly deployed yet. For example, business rates have been devolved.

Clegg says that he does not accept Pinto-Duschinsky's claim that the commission has not properly considered the issue of whether parliament should be able to over-ride the European court of human rights.

Q: Has the government changed its view on collective responsibility?

No, says Clegg.

Q: In that case, why are you saying you are going to "spill the beans" before the electoin and identify the government policies that originated from the Tories.

Clegg asks when he has ever said this.

Q: In Monday the Daily Telegraph reported this.

Ah, "the oracle of truth", says Clegg. He says Chope should listen to what Clegg says, not what the Telegraph reports.

The government is still more coherent than some other single-party governments.

Q: Does this mean that you will not disclose areas of cabinet disagreement?

Clegg says both sides of a coalition are entitled to talk about their different values and different priorities. You don't need a PhD in politics to see which parts of the coalition agreement reflect the priorities of one party or another, he says.

Q: It is said the Lib Dems will not vote for the new constituency boundaries if the Tories do not support Lords reform. Is that true?

Clegg says it does not work like that. Both measures were included in the same bill because they needed to be passed earlier. But he does not recognise the suggestion that one is dependent on the other. The government is pushing ahead with a wide range of reform, he says.Q: Does that mean that the Lib Dems will support the boundary legislation regardless of what happens to Lords reform?

Clegg says that there is no link between the two. But, in the past, when asked about Lords reform, he said that he would expect Tories to support it even if they thought it was not a priority because Lib Dem MPs were expected to support boundary changes. He says he thinks this may have been over-interpreted.

Q: So is Lib Dem support for the boundary legislation dependent on Tories voting for Lords reform?

There is no link, says Clegg.

10.55am:Fabian Hamilton is asking the questions again. He is focusing on boundary changes.

Q: Why has the Boundary Commission been told to make equalising the size of constituencies a higher priority than creating cohesive constituencies?

Clegg says the Boundary Commission has always had the job of equalising the size of constituencies.

Harper says that the government has made this more important because the difference between constituencies is too large. Some have 40,000 voters. Some have 95,000. Under the new system, differences will still be allowed. One seat could be up to 8,000 more voters than another. Harper also says that the current proposals are provisional. The Boundary Commission may revise its plans.

Q: Individual voter registration will lead to another significant reorganisation after the 2015 election. Could this lead to MPs representing numbers not places?

Harper says he does not accept the idea that individual voter registration will not lead to a significant drop in the number of people being registered.

Q: What is a Lib Dem spokesman? And what is his Conservative equivalent. Because Lord Oakeshott (often described as a Lib Dem spokesman) said that if Lords reform fails, the boundary changes are far less likely to go through.

Clegg says Oakeshott is not a party spokesman. Clegg says he does not run a sect. He cannot stop Lib Dems speaking, he says.

Returning to the point he made to Eleanor Laing, he says there is no formal link between Lords reform and the boundary review. Parties cannot pick and choose from elements in the coaliton agreement. But it is obvious that some parties are moe interested in some proposals than others.

Clegg says the Lib Dems are not particularly interested in individual voter registration. But he is implementing it because the Tories want it. He expects the same "civility" from others.

11.07am: They turn to Lords reform. Tristram Hunt, a Labour MP, is leading the questions.

Q: Is it government policy to reduce the size of the executive by 10% after the next election, after the size of the Commons has been cut in size?

Clegg says he does not think Lords reform is as dramatic a proposal as Hunt suggests. And, given that all three main parties proposed an elected reform at the election and that the public are in favour, he does not see the need for a referendum.

Q: Would you be happy with cutting the number of bishops in the Lords to 12? Or would you go further?

Clegg says if Britain ends up with a hybrid house, there would have to be reduction in the number of bishops in the Lords. He indicates that he would be happy with 12.

Q: Do you think former MPs do a better job in the Lords scrutinising legislation than peers have not been MPs?

Clegg says he will not get involved in a beauty contest. But more than 70% of peers are there as a result of patronage. He says this is wrong.

Q: Won't having an elected Lords lead to a loss of expertise?

Clegg says a hybrid Lords would allow appointed experts to continue to serve in it.

He also says that the Lords is "increasingly stuffed with people who are put their by people like me". Increasingly it is populated by people appointed through political patronage.

And he says he does not accept the idea that people who are elected have no expertise.

Q: Do you accept an elected Lords would cost an extra £433m?

Clegg says these figures are speculative. It would depend how you structured the Lords.

Fabian Hamilton intervenes.

Q: Shouldn't we now have a written constitution?

Clegg says the evidence in other bicameral systems suggests you can have one house being more powerful than another. Having two elected chambers does not have to lead to gridlock, he says.

Harper says that, under the goverment's proposals, the House of Commons would still have more political authority than the Lords.

But, even if you do not accept this, the Commons will still have more power as a result of the Parliament Acts, he says.

Harper says legislating does not always increase human happiness. He says Her Majesty gave parliament some advice when she pointed out in her address recently that she had signed 3,500 bills. She seemed to be saying that fewer bills might be a good thing, he says.

On state funding, he says parties already receive a "significant amount" of state funding. Given that, to write out another cheque for poltical parties would be "an ill-judged thing to do".

Clegg goes on: "That does not mean you rule it out forever."

It does not mean that you cannot accept the Kelly report in broad terms, he says. Generally, the report was "on the money", he says.

Q: But Kelly said that his report should not be cherry picked?

Clegg says you would expect Sir Christopher Kelly, as chairman of the committee on standards in public life, to defend his report in its entirety.

At the moment state funding is "higgledy-piggledy", he says. It could be rationalised.

Q: Could you hypothecate people's tax contributions to the party of their choice?

Clegg says he prefers the idea proposed by the Power Commission for voters to choose to nominate a party that receives money when they vote. That empowers the voter, he says.

Graham Allen says he is pleased that the Kelly report has not been killed off.

11.40am:Sheila Gilmore goes next. She asks about the independence referendum.

Clegg says he does not know what the Scottish government's consultation is going to say.

He says it is important to resolve the question of whether Scotland stays in the UK before discussing whether to extend devolution. If you mix those questions up, you are mixing apples and pears, he says.

11.52am: Nick Clegg says he believes in a written constitution. But he would not like a debate on a written constitution to hold up progress on other constitutional reform.

A written constitution would be "neat", he says. But it could be "fearfully slow".

Q: Wouldn't it be better to wait until after the Scottish independence referenendum before going ahead with Lords reform?

Clegg says one of the advantages of having an elected Lords is that Scotland would have guaranteed representation in the chamber. At the moment the sout east of England is over-represented.

He also says that reform cannot be postponed while Scotland decided. Scottish independence would affect many issues, he says. He is surprised by how few answers the Scottish nationlists have to basic questions about independence. For example, he has seen figures showing independence would lead to higher energy bills for Scotland, he says.

Q: Will you look at the franchise for the independence referendum? Some people who are abroad, like soldiers, will miss out. And some people who are only in Scotland on a temporary basis will be allowed to vote.

Harper says that the government's view is that it would be best to use the franchise used for Scottish parliament elections.

12.01pm: That's it. The hearing is over. We did not learn anything big, although it was interesting to see quite how unenthusiastic the committee is about most aspects of Nick Clegg's constitutional reform programme. But Clegg sailed through the hearing (and Harper was excellent). I'll post a summary shortly.

In the Commons chamber Theresa May has been answering an urgent question about the Abu Qatada affair. She insisted that Qatada had no right to appeal to the grand chamber of the European court of human rights because he had missed the deadline. But the ECHR has not accepted this, and May was accused of presiding over a "farce" by her Labour shadow, Yvette Cooper. The BBC has got more on the proceedings here.

That this House, noting the deeply disturbing use of the ancient offence of 'scandalising a judge', considered obsolete since the end of the nineteenth century, by the Northern Ireland attorney general against the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland the Right Honourable Member for Neath and Biteback Publishing, over a passage in his memoir describing an episode in 2005-6 leading up to the historic 2007 political settlement, calls upon the Northern Ireland attorney general to end this serious attack on free speech by withdrawing the proceedings for contempt, further asserts the fundamental right of members of this House to express their views responsibly without fear of judicial censorship, and invites Mr Speaker to consider what action the House might take to defend its rights against such attacks.

The signatories include former home secretaries David Blunkett and Alan Johnson, the former chancellor Alistair Darling, the former Lid Dem leader Charles Kennedy, former Northern Ireland secretaries Paul Murphy and Shaun Woodward and former cabinet ministers Peter Lilley, John Redwood, Tessa Jowell and Frank Dobson.

12.38pm: Going back to Nick Clegg, here are the main points from his appearance at the political and constitutional reform committee.• Clegg said that he only expected his plans to allow for the recall of MPs to be used sparingly. He would not want the procedure to create "an entire festival of populist tit-for-tat politics", he said.

• He said that he was personally in favour of a written constitution. But he said he did not want to push the idea because he was worried it would hold up other constitutional reform.

• He signalled that he would support more state funding for political parties at some point in the future. The report from the committee on standards in public life proposed more state funding combined with caps on donations. Clegg said more state funding was unacceptable at this point given the state of the economy. But he did suggest that the state money already allocated to parties could be distributed in a different way.• He played down suggestions that the Lib Dems would block the creation of the new consituency boundaries reducing the size of the Commons if the Tories did not vote for Lords reform. There was no link between the two issues, he said. But the coalition relied on parties supporting measures which were not particularly important to them. The Lib Dems did this, he said, and as a matter of "civility" he would expect the Tories to do the same.

• He suggested that Scottish indendence could lead to higher energy bills for Scotland.

• He said that he did not accept the need for a referendum on Lords reform.

What was also interesting was what the committee had to say about Clegg's recall proposals.

• MPs on the committee indicated that they do not support Clegg's plan to allow for the recall of MPs. Graham Allen, the committee chairman, said his colleagues felt that Clegg was "fighting yesterday's battle" because his proposal would address the problems caused by the expenses scandal, which was now over. And Labour's Sheila Gilmore described Clegg's plan as an "unloved propsal" because it did satisfy either parliamentarians and others, who thought it went to far, or reformers, who thought it did not go far enough.

In order to fulfil its role the European court must not only be independent, it must also be seen to be independent. That is why we are, I have to say, uncomfortable with the idea that governments can in some way dictate to the court how its case law should evolve or how it should carry out the judicial functions conferred on it.

• Nick Clegg has signalled that he could support more state funding for political parties at some point in the future. He made the comment in a wide-ranging evidence session with the Commons political and constitutional reform committee. (See 12.38pm.)

• Lord Sugar, a Labour peer, has apparently urged voters in London not to support Ken Livingstone in the London mayoral elections. This went out on his Twitter feed a few minutes ago.

I don't care if Ed Miliband is backing Livingstone . I seriously suggest NO ONE votes for Livingstone in the Mayoral elections

2.29pm: The Lib Dems clearly aren't expecting to do very well in the London mayoral contest. Simon Hughes, the deputy leader, told Sky the system was biased in favour of the two main parties. According to PoliticsHome, this is what he said.

There is a sort of two rounds in one system ... That was designed to make sure, I'm told, that the two major parties got into the final, and therefore it is discriminatory against third and other parties and independents. Because if you have a simple state your preference system, then it's much more likely that somebody could come up through the ranks as a popular choice – not necessarily in the first round, but collecting votes as they go.

• Rachel Reeves, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, has urged Lib Dem and Tory MPs to rebel over the so-called "granny tax". At the start of the debate on the budget proposal to freeze age-related allowances, she said: "We are giving members opposite an opportunity to make amends. Giving them a chance to dissociate themselves from this disreputable raid on the incomes of older people."

• Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, has announced that Britain will provide an extra £4m in aid for refugees displaced by the fighting in Syria.

That's it for today.

Tomorrow I'm going to be in Liverpool, writing a live blog about the mayoral election campaign in the city. Voters in the city are electing a mayor for the first time and the winner will be the most powerful elected mayor outside London. I want to look at the campaign to see what it tells us whether having mayors can revive local democracy – as well as trying to work out, of course, who's going to win.